Without a Net

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About the Book

Official Blurb

Millions of Americans--35 percent of adults--live without broadband access at home. Perhaps more surprising, as of late 2009, 22 percent of adults still did not use the Internet at all. New government initiatives and services mean that Internet access and understanding is no longer an optional skill. How can libraries help close the gap?

Teaching novice computer users, including seniors and individuals with disabilities, how to do what they want and need to do online is a formidable challenge for library staff. Part inspirational, part practical, Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide is a summary of techniques, approaches, and skills that will help librarians meet this challenge.

Jessamyn West's experience as a librarian, deeply immersed in technology culture yet living in rural America, makes her uniquely qualified to write this book. Taking a big-picture approach to the subject, she demystifies and simplifies tech training for the busy librarian, providing an easy-to-use handbook full of techniques that can be used with a library's many diverse populations. As an added bonus, she also examines the players in the library technology arena to offer firsthand reports on what works, what doesn't, and what's next.

Additional Information

Writing this book was a multi-year exercise in research, organization and patience. I wrote a bit about the experience for the blog In the Library with the Lead Pipe. I got my copy of the book on May 19, 2011 and it's been enjoying a modest success since then including a starred review from Library Journal.

About Jessamyn West

My name is Jessamyn West and I've been teaching people to use computers since I went to library school at the University of Washington in 1993. I live in Central Vermont and I've been doing basic technology instruction here for six years. I also work at the local library. It seemed unfair to me that there were plenty of programs in place for basic literacy for adults who don't know how to read, but precious few for technologically illiterate adults. Living in an area of the country where many people don't have internet access at home and don't have personal computers makes me realize just how pressing the need is for librarians and other institutions to step up and take on this task.

As more and more functions in our daily life require not just internet access but technological understanding, we're doing a poor job with the social safety net if we don't have a societal mechanism to help people learn and refine these skills. Libraries are one of the few places that offer free access to technology and, sometimes, technology instruction. I wrote this book to help them.

Handouts & Presentations

The book gives this URL for more information. I've broken it down into a few categories. For the official bibliography and webliography for the book, please see those sections.

Handouts you can use

These are the handouts I have used in many basic skills classes. Obviously you'd need to repurpose them to suit your situation, but it probably beats reinventing the wheel. Links go to zipped sets of documents, you can browse the directory for individual files.

Presentations I've given

I've done a number of different presentations about small and rural libraries and the digital divide generally. While you can find links to all of them on librarian.net's talks page, here are a few that are particularly worth noting.

Related Websites & Appendix

The book has a fairly extensive list of web resources that I think people will find useful. The web addresses are all printed out which makes them not super useful for people online. Here is an amended list of the book's list of resources. This list is not intended to be comprehensive and by the time this is in print it may not even be accurate, but it's a carefully curated list of things that I think will be helpful to you most of which I use regularly in my work.

The appendix materials are some slightly edited reprints of material freely available online. In the interests of space, I'll link to them rather than copy/pasting them. Some materials I wanted to include are copyrighted and I don't have permission to reproduce them here, notably Phil Agre's How to help someone use a computer, which could almost be a three page pamphlet replacement for this entire book. The other documents are

Usability.govs Research-Based Web Design & Usability GuidelinesAlso listed in the webliography. This is a nearly 300 page book, a free download. It was created, in the authors' own words "To provide quantified, peer-reviewed Web site design guidelines." All the guidelines are presented with scores for "relative importance" (i.e. how important the issue is related to other usability issues, with the awareness that often tough choices much be made) and "strength of evidence" which is how supported by research the guidelines are. Since the document is a government publication, it is in the public domain. I encourage people to download and read the entire publication or just keep it handy.

Trust-Inducing Features of Graphic Design
Also on Usability.gov is this article by Susanne Furman, a usability engineer with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services about how to design web content to induce trust. This is of large concern to DHHS and it should also be something that we as librarians think about. Furman cites an article in Computers and Human Behavior by Y.D. Yang and H.H. Emurian where they outline a framework for what they call "trust-inducing features." I think these are important considerations to keep in mind when designing digital content for libraries. Read these and think of your library's website, or think about the websites of vendors who you do business with. How trust-inducing is the digital content?

Bibliography

GETTING STARTED WITH TECHNOLOGY
Here is a short annotated list of books you can buy for your library and publishers that you should consider.

The seniors guide to PC basics by Gateway Press (2003).

Large print and sensible, I liked this one. Slightly out of date, but fine for basic vocabulary and concepts.

Easy iMac: see it done, do it yourself by Lisa Lee, Prentice Hall (1999).

Another older book with good pictures and general Mac concepts. A good part of a larger tech collection.

Teach yourself visually computers by Paul McFedries, Visual (2007).

More nuts and bolts than most people want, but very picture-oriented with a lot of good explanations about what things are doing. Some people love/require this, some don't.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
No amount of reading material will be useful to staff if they don't pick it up. There is, I believe, a surplus of writing on library and technology. While most of it is good, care should be taken to have a decent but manageable professional development collection that is engaging to read and does not simply duplicate online information. Here are some suggestions of books that I have actually read.

Time Management For System Administrators by Tom Limoncelli, O'Reilly Media (2005).

OTHER TITLES
It can be tough to find good books about design philosophy that aren't also just architecture porn. Designing with access in mind can still result in functional and attractive outcomes. A few suggested titles that approach their topics with dignity.

Why Things Break: Understanding the World by the Way It Comes Apart by Mark Eberhart, Harmony (2003).

Frequently Asked Questions

Where did the cover image come from?

The cover image was created using a WPA poster that was originally done by Lester Beall. Since it was created for the Rural Electrification Administration, the image is in the public domain. ABC-CLIO modified it for the current cover.

How did you start this project?

I've always been interested in accessibility and usability issues. I spend a lot of my time teaching novice users how to use technology and have been doing this for fifteen years. When Barbara Ittner of Libraries Unlimited contacted me and asked if I had a book idea, this one was obvious. You can read a little more about the process in this article I wrote in February 2011.

Do you have sample chapters online?

Will you come speak to our group about the digital divide?

I love doing public speaking and if time allows I'd be happy to do this. Please email or call me to discuss details. You are welcome to look at my talks page to see some of the other presentations I've done about the digital divide.

Where should I go if I have other questions?

Librarian.net and jessamyn.com both have their own FAQ pages that are relevant to the content on those sites. You are also more than welcome to contact me using any of the methods in the contact me section below.

Check WorldCat to see if it's in your local library (for some meanings of local). If not, consider requesting it.

Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide written by Jessamyn West and published by ABC-CLIO's Libraries Unlimited imprint.
Unglued and available via Creative Commons license as of Feb 2, 2018
ISBN-10: 1598844539
ISBN-13: 978-1598844535